rotations - 04/10/2025
I leave home in 3 days. the day after that i ship off for military training on a plane bound for the desert. San Antonio, Texas is where I'll be while you're sitting there wondering where I am, and marching along getting yelled at by people of greater ranks and yeara will be what I'm doing while you're wondering why I'm not working my site. I promise I will return, but have no fear, for while I may be gone, in spirit I walk with ye always, even through the valley of the shadow of death. I expect within a month of graduating Basic Training (mid-June), I will be back with new updates and new entries relegating great tales of life as a young enlisted man from the perspective of the mystical bohemian. I very much look forward to upgrading and expanding on this site for a long time to come.
But flashing back to today, I've been reflecting a bit on this past year or so. I graduated high school almost one year ago, and the time since has felt like I've gone everywhere and nowhere all at once. Despite all the strife and struggling I've seen in the past year, I've not really done all that much. Maybe that's a good sign. Maybe it means the changes took place within my inner self, and they are just now starting to ripple outward into my material reality. Or maybe it means it was all pointless, and I spent that time suffering for nothing. Life is funny like that sometimes, when something can either be one way or the opposite and there's no way of telling them apart. Some answers come with time, and some don't. The fun part is seeing what answers reveal themselves and what questions were never worth asking in the first place. Ultimately, the best way I can describe the past year for me is in a series of rotations. Maybe I have been moving all this time, but only in-place. I have travelled nowhere.
One thing I can say for-sure is that I've grown. Physically sure, but moreso mentally. I have been training on my own for over a year, and that's helped me develop some small degree of discipline - enough for me to realize that I can push myself to produce real results. So much of my youth was spent torturing myself over a lack of self-discipline, so it's been an interesting experience to sort of fall into having it the way I did, almost without realizing. I think I've also become more emotionally intelligent and understanding, at-least when it comes to the way I interact with people I know. In some ways I may have actually gotten socially dumber in the past year, since I've fallen out of touch with so many people from high school as to have isolated myself. So maybe I'd be a bit too hasty to credit myself with that.
belief - 04/11/2025
Spiritality and philosophy have definitely help me grow and mature more as a person in the past year. I've been casually reading the basic Taoist texts on-and-off for awhile now, and I'm confident enough to call myself a Taoist. These beliefs work really well for me. I guess one thing I really like about it is Taoism doesn't try to make life or the world anything it isn't. It doesn't give it a whole bunch of lore or anything. The fundamentals of Taoism are really a philosophy rather than a religion with all the ornate trappings. It's not like Christianity, where you have to put your faith in an omnipotent creator who set out a system of morality for you to follow and wants you to worship him lest ye suffer eternal damnation. And it's not like Buddhism either, where the defining feature of life is suffering, and you must do everything within your power to distance yourself from and reject the world in which you live.
Obviously these are (what some might call "grossly-") simplified versions of these belief systems, but they're the cliffnotes. Taoism encourages only an acceptance of the vast, endless, and unexplainable way of the universe (the Tao). To live in harmony with not just the world and the people around you, but with fate. It doesn't even necessarily impose this way of living on anyone - much of the Tao Te Ching and other texts cite the 'Taoist lifestyle' not as the 'right lifestyle,' but as a 'sagely' one. All of Taoist philosophy is merely suggestion, never invoking fear through threats of eternal suffering in hell or lower planes or what have you. In fact, Taoism speaks against 'moral virtue' in the way other faiths often view it, offering the perspective that the highest virtue does not covet or strive for virtuousness and instead acts naturally, for then they are in closest harmony with the Tao. Not that Taoists aren't moral people. I'd venture to say most adherents are concerned with social harmony and practical benevolence too, but the neat thing about Taoism is the moral freedom and freedom of belief it allows. It can be as theistic or atheistic as you want it to be. It still gives room to shape and cultivate your own morals and values. I think that's great.
This section isn't meant to be a "TOP TEN Reasons Why TAOISM Is BEST - YOU WON'T BELIEVE NUMBER TEN!" or a condemnation of other philosophies or faiths. It's just some reasons why I find Taoism to be the best for me. As a spiritual person who recognizes the value of faith, I struggled for years with the inability to put stock into different belief systems for various reasons, and Taoism eventually gave me what I found lacking in other faiths.
changes - 04/11/2025
Something I've started to wonder today is if I've been gravitating more strongly towards Taoism in an effort to seal away and preserve some part of myself - to innoculate it from the influence of military life. I have never been an especially devout follower of any faith, and Taoism has not been a fixture of my life for a long time. Despite this, I feel as if I am arming myself with it before plunging into a deep pool of uncertainty. Will I sink to the bottom, or float atop the surface? Who will I be when I emerge? My theory is that I will still be me. I will not - despite what some suspect - emerge a patriotic firebrand ready to slaughter children and refugees hailing from parts of the world that make less money in a week than I spend on a day's breakfast. I think I'll be the same me, maybe a little prouder, maybe a little wiser, definitely a lot balder. But me. I think I'll still be me. Even in a uniform, even one-point-five thousand miles away from here, even after nearly eight weeks of no neocities (oh, the horror!) it'll still be me. Apart from the cue-ball look, the biggest change will probably be a bag full of issued uniforms, a brain stuffed full of boring military info, and a mouth full of stories of Military Basic Stupidity. Stories that I can't wait to share here, with you all (yep, all three of yuz!).
In the face of such big changes, I've also been looking back on my adolescence. For a long time, I've felt tied down. Did you ever try to squirm away when a parent or guardian held your hand too tight while you walked alongside them? I guess I've sort of been squirming for a long time now. To put it another way, I've felt chained down. This is all-too-common of a sentiment among adolescents, but now going into military service I wonder if I'm really walking into a free-er time of my life or if I'm really trading one set of shackles for another. First forbidden by the family, and now by the institution? I guess I won't know until I get there, but I'm happy to say I'm cautiously optimistic.